The present invention relates generally to crop harvesting headers attachable to a combine to initiate the crop harvesting process and, more particularly, to improvements in the transportation of the headers over the ground from one work location to another.
Crop harvesting headers used to harvest grain crops, such as wheat, oats, barley, etc., generally include a reciprocating type cutterbar at its forwardmost location to sever standing crop material and initiate the crop harvesting process. Such grain headers typically include a reel to convey severed crop material rearwardly from the cutterbar and a consolidating mechanism, such as an auger, to consolidate the severed crop material and discharge it rearwardly through an appropriate opening in the header to the combine for further harvesting treatment.
With the advent of higher capacity harvesting machines, the size of the crop harvesting headers, as measured by the length of the cutterbar extending between the forwardly extending sidesheets at opposing ends of the cutterbar, has been steadily increasing. For example, it is not unheard of for the cutting width of current grain headers to approach thirty feet. Clearly, the trend is to increase the size of these headers as this practice decreases the amount of harvesting time necessary to harvest a given crop and increases the harvesting efficiency of the larger capacity combines.
However, increasing the size header creates problems of transporting the header from field to field or from one location to another, particularly if the path along which the header is transported involves the crossing or utilization of public roads. Mechanisms, such as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 3,245,695, which permit the towing of the crop harvesting header in a transverse attitude behind the combine, inherently have the problem of disposition of the wheeled undercarriage and supporting structure during the harvesting operation. Typically, such devices are left at the location in the field where the harvesting operation begins; however, by the time the harvesting is finished for the day, the combine may be several miles from its place of beginning. Other methods of transporting headers include utilization of a separate vehicle to carry the header from location to location. Therefore, it is highly desirable to provide a self-contained transpoting mechanism to avoid the expense and inconvenience of providing additional transporting structures.